Week in Photos

Firefighters of Alcoy and Elda try to extinguish a fire in Torre de Macanes near Alicante, Spain. One person was killed and three injured Sunday as firefighters battled wildfires across Spain, authorities said, the latest victims in a sweltering summer of forest blazes.

AFP/Getty Images

Indian schoolgirls perform during an Independence Day parade rehearsal at The Guru Nanak Stadium in Amritsar. India celebrates its 65th independence anniversary from British rule on August 15.

AFP/Getty Images

A Free Syrian Army fighter helps a woman to run across a street during clashes in Aleppo.

REUTERS

A woman takes shelter from the sun with her baby (hidden by the straw hat) behind a burnt-out house in Caldono, Colombia. Indigenous authorities claimed that soldiers shot some native people, burnt a house and coffee crops. The locals suspect that the soldiers did so in retaliation against members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, whom they fought with on Friday, who remained in the area.

REUTERS

Indian yoga guru Baba Ramdev, center, leans out of a bus window after he was detained by police along with his supporters during a protest march against corruption in New Delhi.

REUTERS

An aerial view from a remote-controlled helicopter, shows the ceremony honoring the Dutch Olympic team in Den Bosch, the Netherlands. The Netherlands won 20 medals at the 2012 London Olympic Games, including six gold medals.

AFP/Getty Images

A long exposure shows stars behind a tree during the annual Perseid meteor shower near the southern town of Mitzpe Ramon, Israel.

REUTERS

A boy balances on wooden stilts as he performs tricks to earn his living on a street in Kathmandu, Nepal.

REUTERS

General view of the Gash River flooding in Kassala, Eastern Sudan.

REUTERS

French athletes celebrate on top of a double decker bus surrounded by supporters during the French Olympic Team victory parade on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris. France finished the London Olympics Games with 34 medals including 11 gold, 11 silver and 12 bronze, and were ranked seventh in the world.

AFP/Getty Images

North Korean soldiers try to drive their military truck from a riverbed to a road during operations to help victims of flooding near Songchon County, North Korea.

AP Photo

Alleged hitman Juan Carlos Hernandez Pulido, aka ‘La Bertha.’

EPA

A giant kite built of 96 individual kites flies at the beach of St. Peter-Ording, Germany. Meteorologists forecast sunny weather with a mix of clouds and temperatures around 73 degrees for the this week in Germany.

AFP/Getty Images

A Free Syrian Army sniper looks through the sight on his rifle inside a house in Aleppo.

REUTERS

A man with no legs begs on a roadside in Beijing. China’s slowing growth has triggered alarm bells, but analysts said government moves to further fine-tune monetary policy should be enough to stabilize the world’s second-largest economy.

AFP/Getty Images

Kashmiri village women collect water chestnuts on their boats from the waters of Wular Lake at Bandipora, north of Srinagar. Water chestnuts are locally known as “singada” and are eaten raw, boiled or are grounded into flour after they are dried.

REUTERS

A Palestinian man leads a horse into the water to have a bath on the beach as Palestinians enjoy a summer day at the seashore in the west of Gaza City.

EPA

Sailors train at the Edersee lake near Rehbach, Germany. Meteorologists forecast rising temperatures around 85 degrees for the coming days.

AFP/Getty Images

John Shea leans into a gate, exhausted, as a forest fire consumes the grounds around a friend’s ranch Monday, Aug. 13, 2012, near Cle Elum, Wash. Shea heard the news, knew his friend was at work, and rushed over to his home to rescue livestock.

AP Photo

A man holds balloons for sale near the National Stadium in Kabul, Afghanistan.

REUTERS

New Jewish immigrants from U.S. arrive at the Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel. A total of 350 immigrants arrived on the flight from the U.S. Tuesday, and were welcomed by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a ceremony at the airport. Over 100 of the new immigrants are expected to join the Israel Defense Forces in the upcoming month.

AP Photo

People swim by the mouth of Itaya River during a festival inaugurating the Amazon River as one of the seven natural wonders of the world in Iquitos, Peru. The Amazon River made it to the list of winners in a global contest conducted by the New Seven Wonders Foundation.

REUTERS

Flood affected residents gather under the rain as they queue for relief goods in suburban Marikina, east of Manila, Philippines. Tropical Storm Kai-Tak will continue to move northwestward on Wednesday toward southeastern China and is expected to dump more rain in the flood-battered northern Philippines a week after half of the sprawling capital city got submerged.

AP Photo

A hiker climbs towards the Blackenstock mountain near Engelberg, in the canton of Obwalden, central Switzerland.

AP Photo

A combination of pictures shows different supporters and followers of Indian yoga guru Baba Ramdev (not pictured) who joined his campaign and supported his fast and protest against corruption and black money in the Ambedkar stadium, a makeshift jail, in New Delhi, India.

EPA

Villagers cross the polluted Ciujung river at Astana Agung village in Serang, Indonesia’s Banten province. According to a villager in Astana Agung, the villagers must walk to another location to get clean water, bathe and wash their clothes as the Ciujung river is polluted from waste being dumped by factories located along the river.

REUTERS

Vehicles are stuck in flooded roads after heavy rains in Uji city, western Japan.

AP Photo

Fishermen travel on their boat at sunset in Tripoli.

REUTERS

Members of Russian female punk group Pussy Riot who are still at large, wait before an interview with Reuters journalists in Moscow. A court will deliver a verdict on Friday in the case of three members of the band who are accused of hooliganism after a performance in Moscow’s main cathedral.

REUTERS

A Free Syrian Army fighter fires his sniper rifle from a house in Aleppo.

REUTERS

A Thai tourist poses for a photograph with a 3D waterfall painting at the Art in Paradise museum in Pattaya resort city, Chonburi province, Thailand. South Korean investors created a new genre of ‘interactive’ art museum visitors may use art as a backdrop for their pictures. The interactive Art in Paradise museum encourages visitors to interact with hundreds of three-dimensional paintings artwork and pose in front of them for snap shots.

EPA

A firefighting helicopter, operated by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, works to suppress the Taylor Bridge Fire east of Cle Elum, Wash.

AP Photo

A boy runs in the water near a pier at sunset in Tripoli, Libya.

REUTERS

People enjoy hot temperature and sunny weather at Arpoador beach, in Rio de Janeiro, southeastern Brazil.

ZUMAPRESS.com

Jockeys race along the beach during the annual beach horse race at Sanlucar de Barrameda, near Cadiz, Spain.

AFP/Getty Images

Raymond Roth,is escorted by law enforcement officers to the Long Island State Park Police Headquarters in Babylon. Roth is suspected of faking his own drowning at a New York beach in a scheme to collect on a life insurance policy. The 47-year-old was reported missing by his son on July 28 at Jones Beach.

AP Photo

A resident wades on a flooded street in camp Lagoon in Baguio, Trinidad province, north of Manila, as tropical Storm Kai-tak hit the northeast of the main island of Luzon before dawn.

AFP/Getty Images

Indian school children march past during India’s Independence Day celebrations in Secunderabad, the twin city of Hyderabad. Manmohan Singh used his Independence Day speech to promise to improve conditions for foreign investment in the country after a sharp downturn in economic growth.

AFP/Getty Images

A couple talks at each other as the sun sets at Enoshima beach in Fujisawa, near Tokyo.

People sit along the harbor as they wait for relatives to arrive by boat from the eastern town of Jeremie in Port-a-Prince, Haiti. Residents from the eastern Haitian town make the 14 hour journey weekly, to sell goods in the capital and return with food and supplies.

AP Photo

Japanese veterans and their followers clad in outdated military costume march to pay respects to the nation’s war dead at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. Japan marked the 67th anniversary of its surrender in World War II today.

AP Photo

A Injured children Syrian evacuate a field hospital after a second air strike in the town of Azaz on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria.

A gardener designs a giant carpet made of flowers to form a floral decoration at Brussels’ Grand Place. The design requires about 700,000 flowers to create, according to event organizers.

REUTERS

Schoolchildren take part in the Independence Day celebrations in front of the historic Red Fort, where Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is to address the nation in Delhi, India.

REUTERS

A tourist sunbathes on a rock at the beach at Manuel Antonio National Park in Quepos, 98 miles off San Jose. The lush national parks of Costa Rica have long attracted tourists from around the globe with their evergreen rainforests, white beaches and thermal springs. Recently, they have lured more unsavory visitors in the form of drug traffickers. Organized crime cartels have turned to Costa Rica’s treasured nature reserves as governments wage military offensives against the gangs throughout Mexico and Central America.

REUTERS

A woman threatens a police officer with a wooden stick as she is evicted from the Jacobo Arbenz housing settlement in Guatemala City. Security forces evicted about 200 families from vacant lots that they took over in January, called the Jacobo Arbenz housing settlement, which is located in front a military base.

AP

President Obama sits down for breakfast at Riley’s Cafe with U.S. military veterans in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Pictured (L-R) Obama, Terry Phillips, Jake Krapfl, and Amanda Irish.

REUTERS

Event site organizers rush to stop a Chinese fan from hugging NBA basketball player Kobe Bryant during a promotional event in Wuhan, China.

REUTERS

British police officers arrest a protesters in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the front of Ecuadorian Embassy in central London. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange entered the embassy in June in an attempt to gain political asylum to prevent him from being extradited to Sweden, where he faces allegations of sex crimes, which he denies.

AP

A policeman gestures in front of some of the dead miners after they were shot outside a South African mine in Rustenburg, northwest of Johannesburg. South African police opened fire on Thursday against thousands of striking miners armed with machetes and sticks at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine, leaving several bloodied corpses lying on the ground.

REUTERS

Police officers stand guard as hired farmers uproot coca shrubs as part of a manual eradication campaign in San Miguel on Colombia’s southern border with Ecuador.

AP

Protesters shout slogans during a rally against South Korea in Tokyo. A group of South Korean protesters, swimming across the sea in a relay, reached contested islands in the Sea of Japan, called Takeshima in Japanese and Dokdo in Korean in a demonstration aimed at belittling Japan’s claims to that territory.

AP

A view of Del Campo square during a training session of the Palio race in Siena. Every year , almost without fail since the mid-1600s, 10 riders compete bareback around Siena’s shell-shaped central square in a bid to win the Palio, a silk banner depicting the Madonna and child.

REUTERS

A Pakistani man and his daughter, sleep on a bed under the shadow of a tree, on a street median, on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan. Many Pakistanis sleep outdoors to escape the heat trapped in their homes during the summer months.

AP

Chinese exhibitors show samples of Brazilian football souvenir items during the China Sourcing Fair in Sao Paulo, Brazil. More than 500 companies from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan took part in the fair, presenting a variety of products from electronic goods to clothes.

AFP/Getty Images

Students from Pashupatinath Veda Vidya Ashram, a school on Hindu religious teaching, look out from a window of their class in Katmandu, Nepal.

AP

Pakistani security stand guard at the entrance of Pakistan’s air force base in Kamra, northwest of Islamabad, Pakistan. Militants attacked an air force base in northwest Pakistan filled with F-16’s and other aircraft before dawn Thursday, sparking a heavy battle with security forces that left parts of the base in flames.

AP

Republican vice presidential candidate, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. listens to the crowd response during his speech at a campaign stop at Walsh University in North Canton, Ohio.

Commuters queue at Lima’s Metropolitano bus station during the public transportation workers’ strike in Lima. Transportation workers are protesting against Lima’s mayor Susana Villaran’s new ordinance that aims to impose tighter restrictions to regulate public transportation providers. Private vehicle owners have taken advantage of the strike by providing short distance routes and charging commuters more than what they would normally pay for public transportation.

REUTERS

Thai vegetable market vendors pull back awnings and their produce off a railway track to allow a cross-country train to dissect through the middle of the town of Maeklong, in Samut Songkhram, west of Bangkok . The bustling market, in the middle of the town, has to scramble from the tracks eight times a day as trains pass.

REUTERS

Horses crash on the first curve of the dirt-covered course in Siena’s main square during the Madonna dell’Assunta ancient Palio horse race in Tuscany, central Italy. One of the horses broke a front leg in the crash. Animal rights campaigners are calling for an end to the famed Palio after six of ten horses crashed during the latest edition. Critics have long held the race, a fierce competition between the Tuscan city’s quarters, should be held without animals. Horses frequently fall, collide, or are trampled during the race, and some 50 have died since 1970..

AP Photo

People attempt to climb greased and slippery poles, to which prizes and flags are attached, to celebrate Indonesia’s Independence Day in Jakarta. Indonesia marked the 67th anniversary of its freedom from Dutch rule.

AFP/Getty Images

Indian Muslims offer prayers on the last Friday of Ramadan outside the Bandra railway station in Mumbai. Muslims around the world are preparing to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

AFP/Getty Images

embers of the all-girl punk band “Pussy Riot” Yekaterina Samutsevich (L), Maria Alyokhina (C) and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (R) sit in a glass-walled cage during a court hearing in Moscow. A Moscow court handed a two years jail sentence on the three women from a tiny punk band who captured global attention by defying the Russian authorities and ridiculing President Vladimir Putin in a church. Pussy Riot release rallies have stretched from Sydney to New York as a growing list of celebrities joined ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and pop icon Madonna in a campaign directed against Putin’s crackdown on most dissent.

AFP/Getty Images

Members of the judicial police participate in the Gabon national day parade in Libreville. Clashes broke out in Libreville when police broke up an unauthorized protest in support of the country’s main opposition leader.

AFP/Getty Images

A member of Indonesian Air Force lies on the ground after she fainted during a ceremony commemorating the country’s independence day at Merdeka Palace in Jakarta, Indonesia.

AP Photo

Yuto Ono, 3, sitting on his father’s shoulders enjoy a walk through a field of sunflowers at a park in Zama, west of Tokyo.

AP Photo

People inspect the aftermath of an overnight car bomb attack in Baghdad’s Shiite enclave of Sadr City, Iraq.

AP Photo

A Nepalese Hindu man holds a candle while he gets ready to perform a ritual during Kuse Aunsi or Nepalese Father’s day at Gokarneshwar temple in Katmandu, Nepa. Kuse Aunsi is a unique Hindu festival of Nepal where fathers living or dead are honored. Children with living fathers show their appreciation by giving presents and sweets and those whose fathers are deceased pay tributes at Gokarneshwar temple.

AP Photo

A masked man attends a rally, in support of Russian punk band Pussy Riot, in Sydney, a Moscow court handed a two years jail sentence on the three women from a tiny punk band who captured global attention by defying the Russian authorities and ridiculing President Vladimir Putin in a church.

REUTERS

U.S. Forest Service firefighters work on the Springs Fire in Boise National Forest near Banks-Garden Valley, Idaho.

REUTERS

A young man jumps from a pedalo into the water of Lake Leman as he and his friends enjoy a hot summer day in Lausanne, Switzerland.

REUTERS

Lama Buddhist monks unveiled a giant religious painting of Sakyamuni Buddha, while pilgrims and tourists watch, during the unfolding of the giant Buddha portrait event at Sho Dun Festival at Drepung monastery in Lhasa city, Tibet.

EPA

A firefighting tanker plane drops water above a forest fire near Lacanau, near Bordeaux, France.

REUTERS

Juli Kisan plays with Buddu, a one and a half-year-old sloth bear at the family’s home in Lakhapada, India.

AP Photo

Francesco Matrone leaves the police headquarters of Salerno, southern Italy, after his arrest. More than 100 agents and a helicopter participated in the arrest of Francesco Matrone, known as “The Beast’ in a dwelling near Salerno. Convicted in a double homicide and sentenced to two life terms, Matrone has been on the run since 2007. He was on the Interior Ministry’s list of top nine fugitives.

AP Photo

Thai nursing students practicing dancing to music as part of the “Smiling and Happiness for the Patient” project at the Royal Thai Air Force Nursing College in Bangkok, Thailand.

EPA

A huge fire engulfs a bar in Phuket. Four people died and at least 11 were injured in a fire early on Friday at the Tiger Pub on Patong beach, Phuket Island, Thailand.

REUTERS

Visitors watch “kingyo”, or goldfish, swimming in a polyhedral aquarium on the opening day of the Art Aquarium Exhibition in Tokyo.

AP Photo

Visitors explore Colourscape on the front lawn of Holburne Museum in Bath, England. Billed as the museum’s summer event, the Colourscape Music Festival is a labyrinth of inflatable interconnected chambers flooded with colored light which forms a walk-in sculpture of color, light and sound.

Getty Images

Brazilian Adriano De Souza in action to win his round one heat at the Billabong Pro in Teahupoo, Tahiti.

AFP/Getty Images

A member of the Roman Legion XIV group marches towards Nowa Slupia, south-east of Poland,. Roman Legion XIV reenactors will take part in the 46th Dymarki Swietokrzyskie, the largest archaeological picnic in Poland.

EPA

Indian snake charmers show their skills during a snake festival in the city of Bishnupur, north west of Kolkata. The festival is organized as a part of special worship to the Hindu mythology goddess Manasha, the god of snakes.

AFP/Getty Images

Miss Panama, Maricely del Carmen Gonzalez Pomares stretches the wings of her costume during a rehearsal for the finals of the Miss World beauty pageant at Dongsheng Stadium in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China.

EPA

An activist of the Ukrainian feminist group Femen raises a chainsaw after cutting down a cross, erected to the memory of victims of the political repression in Kiev. The protest was in support of Russian punk band Pussy Riot, who captured global attention by defying the Russian authorities and ridiculing President Vladimir Putin in a church.

AFP/Getty Images

An Italian Carabinieri falls off from his horse during a parade on the eve of the Palio horse race, in Siena.

AFP/Getty Images

A firefighter (L) holds a 14-month-old baby who has been rescued from a pit caused by a road cave-in in Harbin, China. According to local authorities, two people died from injuries sustained in the fall into a 10-meter-deep pit caused by a road cave-in.

REUTERS

The Rockettes perform at the 2012 “Radio City Christmas Spectacular” Christmas In August Kick-Off at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

WireImage

Ramoncito Campo kisses his wife Hernelie Ruazol Campo on a flooded street during a southwest monsoon that battered Manila. The newlyweds pushed through with their scheduled wedding despite severe flooding that inundated wide areas of the capital and nearby nine provinces.